Endoscopic surgery allows a surgeon to perform safe and successful procedures because of the surgeon's ability to view the surgical site through the endoscope lens. For some surgical procedures, such as dissection, the cannula housing the endoscope has a transparent blunt dissection tip through which the surgeon views the surgical site. The blunt dissection tip protects the endoscope lens from being smeared by blood or fatty tissue present at the surgical site, or from being fogged due to the moist subcutaneous environment. However, many surgical procedures cannot be performed using a blunt dissection tip. When side branches and vessel ends of a vessel must be transected to harvest the vessel, the end of the cannula must be open to allow the surgical tools to extend from the cannula. When the cannula end is open, the endoscope lens is subject to the adverse conditions described above. The surgeon is forced to repeatedly remove the cannula from the body to clean the endoscope lens. This increases the length and risks of the operation.
Some conventional schemes for cleaning an endoscope lens rely upon an endoscope with a cleaning system built within it. However, having a cleaning system within the endoscope restricts the angle of incidence at which the cleaning fluid may be propelled toward the lens to almost parallel to the lens. This results in a less effective cleansing action. Also, since the spray is being directed parallel to the lens, the surgeon cannot see the spray source and it is therefore difficult to adjust the direction of the spray. Thus, with these systems, the endoscope must still be removed on occasion for manual cleaning where the proper angle of incident spray can be obtained manually. Additionally, in procedures using gas insufflation, the gas may dry out a target vessel or other surgical site. In these situations, it is often necessary to irrigate the vessel to prevent the vessel from drying out. However, conventional endoscope washing systems are not capable of providing both endoscope lens cleaning and remote surgical site irrigation. Therefore, a remote endoscopic washing system would be desirable for more effectively cleansing the endoscope lens during a surgical procedure by allowing the surgeon to control the angle at which cleansing fluid is sprayed as well as allowing the surgeon to use the same apparatus to irrigate the surgical site itself.